Reviews

I am [just] old enough to remember Dr Who in the 1960s-the creepy titles and music,the first Doctor hiding behind the sofa from the Daleks-and at the time it seemed very great indeed.But so many years later and i bought a Dr Who DVD to see if the magic was still there.Unfortunately it hasn"t aged at all well and the terrible SFX and acting look positively victorian.Then again even when Patrick Troughton first appeared i was already tiring of it and John Pertwee was the last straw in my opinion.Fortunately help was at hand in the shape of "The Invaders" which premiered in about 1969 in the UK.It is being shown on Channel 5 here and it makes both Dr Who and Star Trek look laughable by comparison.

This was supposed to be a great movie.It follows the exploits of a bunch of absolutely typical American teenagers [the girls are beautiful,the boys handsome] who narrowly escape death on a plane when one of them has a vision of the impending disaster.But Death won"t be cheated,and it sets out to claim them back.What we have here is "Alien" without a monster;it picks them off one by one in a variety of satisfying ways,but ultimately we feel cheated by not seeing its dripping fangs.The movie is heavy on visual cliches too--i lost count of the "running away from large explosions in slow













motion" scenes!If you are foolish enough to watch this movie,be warned; you will be two hours nearer your own death by the time its finished.

This is a great action movie made at about the same time as The Fugitive and they share at least two things in common:-smart dialogue,and the fact that the [rather long in the tooth] star is totally upstaged by the supporting star i.e John Malkovich/Tommy Lee Jones.As in all of his movies Clint plays a sort of tortured anti-hero who has great one line jokes and even better rabbit punches,whereas Malkovich plays Mitch Leary as an embittered ex CIA assassin turned psycho.Rene Russo is obviously no feminist or she would surely have turned down her role as the token love interest for Clint,who [Russo]just happens to be a dead ringer for Jackie Kennedy.The downside to the movie is Clints" sidekick [played by Dylan Mc Dermott] who bounds about like a hyperactive ten year old kid [Frank,Frank,can i do it please Frank?!!] and the fact that Clint pursues Leary on foot twice and never took the chance to shoot him in the leg.I know its only a movie but things like that bother me!Overall though its a great thrillride and well worth viewing.

Watching movies is such a lazy,passive activity that i have decided on something more amusing-"make your own movie".Its a bit like "Fantasy Football".Take some plot elements;a handsome scientist,an attractive single mother with two cute kids,a picture-postcard town and an extinct volcano.Write these on pieces of paper,put them in a bag and shake.Will the handsome scientist discover something no=one else knows,and will nobody believe him?Will he fancy the attractive single mother and will he be rebuffed,but eventually get through? Will the volcano erupt a few times and kill some unpleasant people before finally destroying the picture postcard town? Will the handsome scientist,the attractive single mother and the cute kids ride off into the sunset? I know what you are thinking-this is all very predictable so we had better drench it in CGI effects,which are rubbish of course,but they"ll do for the public.Congratulations!You are a moviemaker!

Its hard to objective about something you love,even when that something is a movie.I saw "The Terminator" when it was released and thought [and still think] it was the best and most original Science Fiction movie i had ever seen."Terminator 2" was a worthy successor with better SFX even though it lacked the darkness and originality of T1.The link between the two was of course James Cameron.And then we have T3,directed by Johnathan Mostow.I have tried to think of something positive to say about T3 but i can"t except to say that its over quickly and marginally less painful than root canal work!In the first scene we see an Aerial HK,obviously CGI and totally unrealistic with even the design changed.Its downhill from there;you get the impression that Mostow had a series of ideas for setpieces and at the last minute had to come up with a story to link them.Nobody acts with any conviction,and Arnold is almost a parody of himself.And the dialogue!"I"ll be back"-"She"ll be back"-"He"ll be back".Need i go on? It hurts to have to criticise ANY movie with Terminator in the title,and i suppose anyone who has never seen T1 or T2 will love this but all i can say is "I hope he"ll not be back"!

As you may gather from my signature i have railways in my blood,so it is practically inevitable that i love this movie.However it is more than a simple comedy about a village trying to save its railway branch line,though that would be good enough.It is also a picture of a time when a way of life was about to disappear with the railways,a time when people had good manners and treated each other with respect.A time also when to love your country didn"t open you to the charge of xenophobia.The cast are just fabulous with Hugh Griffith as Dan being the funniest,and a youngish Sid James [who always looked 55] before his Carry On heyday!The star is the countryside in beautiful Technicolour and funnily enough my favourite scene is a minor one; its where a girl in a summer dress is running down a hill to see the "Thunderbolt" go past! Now some good news; a couple of years ago i set out to walk the Limpley Stoke-Camerton line where the line was filmed,and was amazed to find how much was unchanged.Apart from the missing track,the cricket field [with the road viaduct behind] was exactly the same and at Monkton Combe [Titfield] the huge iron gateposts are still there.Anyone wanting to do the same should alight at Freshford station near Bath,walk through the lovely village past "Mr Valentines House" then to Limpley Stoke Station and follow the line from there.Like the film you"ll love it!

From Hollywood,that is!Whether it be space aliens,natural disaster,plague or comets Uncle Sam always gets his first and Los Angeles usually bears the brunt of the destruction.But its not all bad;Americans invariably discover the threat and after a few minor characters have died,neutralise it.More often Johnny Foreigner only puts in an appearance to show the Taj Mahal or [as here] Arc De Triomphe being wasted.I won"t bore you with the plot [the movie can do that] but simply say that it is "Armageddon" with one brain cell.Like that other movie,the laws of physics go right out of the window--so on the comets" surface there is gravity,jets of gas[?] and the nukes are helpfully fitted with red LED timers!But you have to wait till the end for the best bits;we are told the tidal wave will move at 1100 mph and be 1000 feet tall, yet Elijah Wood manages to outrun it on a motorbike!If you want to see a Real disaster movie check out "On The Beach"[1959] and don"t waste your time on this junk.

A comedian once commented that by the time you reached 40 you had done and said anything funny that you were ever going to say.The same rule must apply to moviemakers because the Stephen Spielberg who made "Close Encounters" would surely not want his name on the credits of "Taken".Its a ragbag collection of ideas and whole sequences lifted straight from other TV shows and movies.with only the names changed.The first episode i saw had an "alien"--obviously CGI and looking much like one of those alien blow up rubber dolls you see sometimes.Sensing that "Taken" fell into the SBIG [So bad its good] category,i continued to watch.Heres an example - in one episode the alien ship is caught on radar hovering over [naturally] America.What do they do? Scramble F16s to get a look at it? No, they stand around talking till i disappears! Last nights episode "Dropping The Dishes" was a carbon copy of "Close Encounters" except that the SFX were WORSE! To top it all,being a Spielberg show it has a "cute kid" who in real life has the remarkable name Dakota Fanning! This show is such a terrible parody of everthing to do with science fiction that i am hooked and cannot wait for the next episode.

I saw Tron when it first came out and although i was impressed,i wasn"t exactly blown away.The problem was that it didn"t look too different to most of the video games [especially Battlezone] that were around at the time.However all of the positive comments on the DVD persuaded me to buy it,and i discovered that Tron has actually IMPROVED with age! Why? Well,one of Trons creators hit the nail on the head when he said " CGI effects now are all about imitating reality,making it as lifelie as possible.What we wanted to do was create another world,another reality altogether". Tron does that in spades,from the great Lightcycle race to [my favourite] the Solar Sailer.The only drawback to Tron is that you cannot really appreciate it on a TV screen-you would need a 40 feet screen in your living room-but then i guess someone is working on that right now! P.S. Isn"t it funny you have to give a "USER Location to comment on this movie?

The best tribute i can pay to this gripping film is that i watched it for the first time last night and can already remember each scene word for word,which in an 80 minute film is no small achievement! Previously i had been put off by the usual description of it as a "B Movie",but where does this place modern day "blockbusters" such as Armageddon or The Sixth Sense? Compared to Snatchers they would be "Z Movies". Having read through the comments you"ll have a fair idea of the plot--small town doctor discovers that people are being replaced by replicas grown from seed pods-but i think too much emphasis is placed on the allusions to Mc Carthyism [right wing] and Communism [left wing],since the the story is perfect in its own right.Direction,camerawork and acting [for the 50"s]are taut and inspired,except for a couple of plot holes which were dealt with in the [inferior] 1978 remake i.e how did the pods drain the soul out of the humans and what happened to the human bodies? Special mention must go to Dana Wynter as Mc Nallys simply radiates beauty,intelligence and class-she really lights up the screen! Finally,anyone who likes this movie needs to check out the greatest Science Fiction TV show ever "The Invaders" which was clearly inspired by IOTBS except that the aliens merely assumed alien form and infiltrated the armed forces and government!

This movie seems to be derided almost as much as "Tron" and with as little reason,in my opinion.I saw posters advertising it on the London Underground and thought it looked very cool but i left the cinema with an unsatisfied feeling,but why? Firstly, the Special Effects although very good,are not that much better than Terminator 2 because in the latter movie the action interfaces with the real world;here its almost completely artificial. The Stars are not big enough Brosnan and Fahey are no match for Arnie or Bruce! The plot is good, and quite plausible as Sci-Fi goes and with a neat twist at the end. But overall there simply weren"t enough explosions for the Action fans or enough Spacecraft for the Trekkies, so the movie lost its place in the hall of fame.Personally i still like it a nd always watch it on TV! By the way, critics who can"t understand why Jobe wants to take over the world-he is Mad and has delusions of grandeur-its that simple!

I accidentally tuned into the pilot episode of this show tonight and my first sight was a comely young female Vulcan rubbing oil into the skin of a man dressed only in his briefs,and who [lets say]looked as if he was enjoying it! But it was downhill from there;as far as i understand it this is supposed to be a prequel to the original Star Trek SO--why is the design of the Enterprise radically more advanced than ST1? The ship is bristling with computer screens, cool lighting and the sliding doors don"t make that little "hiss" they used to/will do! The plot [such as it was] concerned our heroes attempt to rescue a Klingon [thats a guy with a rubber head,by the way] from a massive alien ship by infiltrating it with a captured alien scout vessel they even ripped off Independence Day!] and natcho they send the Captain down to do the dirty work. Only one startlingly original twist to the story;the crewman in the red T-shirt doesn"t get killed!

The basic premise of this movie is that a spaceship designed for hyperlight travel accidentally travels to Hell and back,which is pretty much how i felt as i left the cinema. #1] The Story;-there isn"t one. #2]The Special Effects;- In the opening scene we are treated subjected]to a CGI rendition of objects and water floating in zero gravity. I have NEVER seen anything so spectacularly unrealistic in my life! How could anyone put this on tape and be happy with their work? #3] The Cast;-do quite well with the fatuous dialogue although Fishburne rarely has to do any more than look mean and moody. #4] The Physics;- Apparently the ship creates a mini Black Hole [which has immense gravity] so why isn"t it crushed by the gravity? Overall;-Its a total mess, lacking direction or purpose so don"t make the mistake i did and end up burning in Hell, hew to the true path and be rewarded in Heaven!

The best possible tribute to this movie is that it still provokes a strong reaction from people who see it for the first time.I showed it to a friend recently and his predictable reaction was "if i was Bobby i would &*%$£& etc etc !" But what would you do really? Resist, and get Eds" head blown off or worse? Run away and leave Ed to his fate? Or tell them your friends are coming,and get them shot? Thats the scariest aspect of "Deliverance", of being in a situation which is beyond your control and not knowing what to do.Its a movie i shouldn"t like; Action/Buddy and it stars Burt Reynolds who isn"t exactly known for his Shakespearian qualities! But,like "Falling Down" and its star Michael Douglas i can forgive him his other turkies for this gem. Another interesting feature of Deliverance is the way the characters meander like the river;the first hillbilles [the banjo players] are merely strange and amusing,the next [the Griners] are a bit scary,with the next lot [Squeel!] being Emissaries from Hell! By the time our heroes get to Aintry the "billies are just normal but a bit dim.A great movie but definitely not family viewing!

It would be hard to explain to anyone much under 30 just how huge a star Michael Jackson was in 1983 at the time the album "Thriller" was released.I am the same age as him,and have followed his career from its beginnings as the child prodigy in the Jackson 5 through its doldrums in the mid 70s,to megastardom in "83 and back to Planet Earth in the noughties! When the video "Thriller" was released i was in a nightclub in London and they screened it at midnight; everyone stopped dancing,drinking or snogging to watch the most expensive music video ever made. Fast forward 18 years and i picked up the full length "The Making Of Michael Jacksons" Thriller at a car boot sale for £3. Would it still be as good? The answer is that its far,far better! We have become used to plastic pop bands manufactured by corporations, special effects programmed on computers by nerds in offices-to blandness and unoriginality. Get this video and take a trip back to a time when Jacko was a handsome young black guy surrounded by brilliant dancers and a special effects ARTIST in Rick Baker. And be awestruck by a genius at work.

Unlike many contributors to this site,i can remember the original Star Trek which i watched [age 7] when it first came out. At that time the only other Sci Fi on TV was "The Invaders" which i loved, and which i still enjoy 30 years later. I didn"t hate Trek but neither did i love it - it was way too camp with limp jokes weak stories and an odd kind of homo-erotic thing going on between Kirk and Spock. However i tuned into an old episode of "TNG" called "Royale" tonight and found that nothing had changed! They beam three of the most important people on the Enterprise down to a possibly hostile alien environment,the three are held there and after a few amusing adventures are returned to the ship in time for a joke with the captain. They have learned nothing [and neither have we] and next week it will all happen again.Its comfortable like an old pair of shoes and totally unchallenging, like every show before it.

It would be so easy to mock this movie,but similar to laughing at your five year old kids" drawing of his mum, so i won"t. All i will say is to the director crew and [especially] the cast-we all make mistakes in life,but it will get better. Meanwhile, don"t give up the day job.

I have always regarded Star Trek and its spinoffs as very weak Sci-Fi but tonight i steeled my nerves and "sat through" an episode of "Voyager". The plot,which concerned the ship being trapped in a space anomaly,was ripped off from the New Outer Limits episode "Dark Matters" where it was done considerably better and more convincingly.All of the aliens [who have previously had no contact with Earth] speak perfect English with a strong American accent,so no translation problems.In this Universe all aliens are humanoid with ribs and nodules on their heads which the cynic would say were glued on and the Borg are distinguished by metal above one eyebrow and on one hand.Even when several spacecraft have a shootout, each craft is a different colour so the spectator doesn"t get confused! 50 years after the "The day the earth stood still", "The War Of The Worlds" and 33 years after "2001" is this the best we can do?

I have never understood the appeal of this show. I grew up in the 1960s and easily the best Sci-Fi at the time was "The Invaders" - dark,moody, with a charismatic hero and great storylines, but it was replaced by "Trek" and i remember the first episode had Kirk fighting an alien called a Gorn. Even as an 8 year old i remember thinking "this is just stupid, thats a guy in a crocodile suit!" and although i won"t deny that there some good storylines and SFX, its a totally over rated show. The sequels are hopeless-just rewritings of the scripts from the original series and every alien is [conveniently] humanoid with bits and pieces stuck on their heads--are the producers so short on ideas that this is the best they can do? I was going to do a real demolition job on "Trek" but its pointless; if you get something positive out of it then great but go easy on the slavish adoration!

Way back in 1993 i tuned in to the first episode of "The X Files" expecting something great,and i wasn"t disappointed. Every show tackled a different idea, great special effects etc., it seemed to mark a new era in television sci-fi. But,after about two years i suddenly realised that it had degenerated into a kind of formulaeic soap opera where you could miss the first 20 minutes then switch on the TV and still follow the story. The basic story goes #1] Thing kills someone-local cops are baffled #2] Mulder/Scully are called in, Thing kills more people #3] Cops think they have captured Thing, Mulder has bizarre theory but Scuully is not convinced #4] Mulder or Scully hunts for Thing at night armed only with an incredibly powerful torch, and is captured by Thing #5] Just as Thing is about to kill/abduct/impregnate Mulder or Scully, Mulder/Scully turns up and kills Thing using powerful torch #6] Thing disappears leaving no trace #7 Mulder and Scully celebrate by sharing a lame joke,but resist the urge to get jiggy #8] Cue scene of REAL Thing which is still alive [credits,with annoying kids voice]. The X Files, like "Star Trek", had its moments but should have been deleted after the second series.

There is a saying that "those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it". In 1998 against my better judgment i actually PAID to see this shambolic movie, and last night i compounded the error by watching it on TV ! To quote Jeff Goldblum from Independence Day "what the hell was i thinking". Ham acting, cliche ridden dialogue and it stars Bruce Willis [!]-the crappest CGI effects imaginable, no attention to the laws of physics,and [as with ID] a speech from the American President which had me reaching for the sick bag. Other reviewers have summed it up better than i can, and if you read through the "goofs" you"ll get an idea of what you are in for if you watch this excrecence. Hollywood ought to have Movie Police, so Michael Bay could be arrested and we could all sleep safely at night!